After you have determined the tools and their components that you will use, you should consider how it fits within your existing environment. Consider the following factors:
Availability
Speed
Fault Tolerance
Firewalls
Different hardware and software configurations can be put into place to achieve the goals for each of these factors. One overriding factor in any configuration choice is obviously cost. You should compare your requirements to your budget to ultimately determine the configuration that you implement.
To understand these environment factors, review the following sections: